Racing commentator Mike Cattermole on his memories of the Cheltenham Festival

Cheltenham is the gift that keeps on giving. It’s like a friend who is always a pleasure to be around and so rarely lets you down.

As a young racing journalist, visiting Cheltenham for the first time back in the 1980s, I couldn’t wait to see it in the flesh and quietly wishing and hoping it was as good as it looked on the TV.

But it was better, so much better.

I was immediately blown away by the scale and set-up of the place. And what a backdrop.

One never tires of looking across to the ancient Cleeve Hill, a rugged escarpment with jagged outcrops and a stony-faced witness to thousands of races on the 350 or so undulating acres below it. What a stage for the very best that National Hunt racing has to offer, what a theatre.

The build-up seems to get bigger - and longer - every year. Preview nights are a modern phenomena, on both sides of the Irish Sea. The audiences are quieter and more respectful, though, in Ireland.

Then on raceday itself, come rain or shine, balmy or bloody freezing, the anticipation of the Festival never wanes. It reaches fever pitch. And it doesn’t matter whether you have had a bet or not. Everyone has a view.

Will your instincts be confirmed to cue a rush of smugness, or will your judgement be reduced to a rubble of embarrassment?

The thrill of riding a winner is something that I will never experience, nor will training or even owning one, come to think of it. But you know from the reaction of owners and especially those battle-hardened professionals – the trainers and jockeys, the grooms – how much more a winner means at Cheltenham than anywhere else. It means everything.

A victory achieved on a stage where no quarter is given and everything has to be right. That one chance may not come again and the moment must be seized, savoured and enjoyed.

The stampeding crowds that rush down to the winners’ enclosure is very Cheltenham. Not just to hail the winner but to appreciate the placed horses who have been heroic, too. Winners and losers are greeted with more enthusiasm here than anywhere else. They recognise too that fate is sometimes not always kind and never forget the likes of Gloria Victis or Our Conor.

Yes, the horses are the stars of the show. Some return year on year, with varied success of course. Then there are the newcomers who have been impressing all winter and now have to prove it at the place that really matters.

We learn to become indebted to them all and develop a bond, an appreciation and even love for a special few. We hear the stories about the likes of Golden Miller and Arkle, both immortalised in bronze at the racecourse.

The Dikler was before my time but how many Gold Cups did he run in – seven? Apparently a moody, enigmatic individual, he finally won the thing at the expense of the more talented and more popular Pendil in 1973. The Dikler also finished third to Glencaraig Lady in 1972 and second to Captain Christy in 1974.

A few years later, when now well into this great game, I felt for poor Tied Cottage who, having fallen at the last in the 1979 Gold Cup, ran away with it the following year at the age of 12 for Dan Moore, only to get disqualified two months later because a prohibited substance (probably from contaminated food) was found in his urine. At least he never knew.

This was the era, too, of Willie Wumpkins. What a name, what a horse!

Willie won four times at the Festival and it is maybe forgotten that the time between the first and last of his wins was eight years. Now that’s special. Willie won what is now known as the Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle in 1973 when trained by Adrian Maxwell and ridden by Pat Colville.

I only got to know of him when he came back after injury - and a heart problem - to claim the first of his Coral Golden Hurdles (now the Pertemps Final) in 1979 at the age of 11 when trained by Jane Pilkington (Maxwell’s auntie) and ridden by her son-in-law, the amateur, Jim Wilson.

Willie only went on to win the next two runnings of the race - didn’t he? - the last of them at the grand old age of 13! It was a masterpiece of planning and training by Mrs Pilkington and her jockey of a wonderful, fragile but talented old-timer. Just fabulous.

Jim of course went on to ride Little Owl to win the 1981 Gold Cup which I didn’t enjoy so much as I was hoping that Night Nurse, who finished second, might have become the first to win both the Champion Hurdle and Gold Cup. Little Owl, his stablemate, was just a bit too young and too quick.

I admired Night Nurse very much but I adored Sea Pigeon who ran in three Champion Hurdles before finally winning it - twice in a row. That’s form figures of 42211 and he almost seemed to get quicker as he got older.

Having seen the super-tough Monksfield get back up and beat him in 1979, Jonjo O’Neill knew that a year on he would have to delay his challenge until after jumping the last, certainly not before, to get their revenge. Yes, the 1980 Champion Hurdle was nervously awaited. I wasn’t going to miss it and ducked out of school to come home and watch a brilliant plan come to fruition.

Trust John Francome to leave it even later 12 months on when Jonjo was injured!

Then it was soon the era of Michael Dickinson and his “famous five”, a never-to-be-repeated feat from the man affectionately known as the “mad genius” (“You’re only half right” he once told me) and who was also responsible for the brilliant Badsworth Boy, who completed his hat-trick of Queen Mother Champion Chases from 1983-85.

I watched Dawn Run and listened to Peter O’Sullevan’s iconic commentary in my rented London flat in 1986. But I was there for Desert Orchid’s Gold Cup three years later, on the coldest, wettest and filthiest of Cheltenham afternoons when the great grey was almost withdrawn from the race.

Dessie was never at his imperious best at Cheltenham but his raw courage saw him through that very raw day.

That was over 30 years ago now but you get the picture. You get to treasure Cheltenham and its players, both equine and human. It’s a passion, an obsession.

What new stories, champions or even legends will be made this year?

Cheltenham has a habit of spoiling us, it really does, while Cleeve Hill looks on.

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